At this point you're just assuming I said a whole lot of stuff I really didn't say.

Who said anything about what's -allowed- or not? Jesus christ I'm not the police or your mom, I said I didn't like a thing and then I explained why I think the thing is a shitty thing to do.

I never said you said something about what's allowed or not. You simply said it was a dick move and if you read my post, you see I agree with that. I wanted to add that even though it's a shitty thing, I still consider it acceptable, as in allowed, but that was me expanding on my own opinion and what I wanted to say, not refuting one of your points. I quoted you, but that doesn't mean that every single thing I said afterwards was in response to your post.

Samsally wrote:

Yeah pretty sure you don't get to tell people how they're 'allowed' to talk about their own trauma.

Is this in response to something I said? I agree with this, I hope that's clear.

Samsally wrote:

Plus, I'm not completely convinced that kinks deserve to be completely bulletproof just on the grounds that people feel bad when you criticize them.

They shouldn't be bulletproof on no account, people should be able to discuss anything. However, I should note, if a person's idea of critically analysing a kink (or anything, really) is "I find x horrible/distatestful" or "I had a traumatic experience with x, therefore x is problematic", then they made a big mistake in their analysis.

This won't be a popular thing, but if someone is talking about being whipped, for example, in a cafe and another person becomes emotionally traumatised by it, they should probably find a nice cabin in the woods somewhere and retire from civilisation.

This isn't a pretty world, and I can't give a lot of weight to people who become emotionally traumatised simply by occasionally realising the reality of it. I will give some caveats for things like survivors of abuse, but if we're talking about a person who is simply so uncomfortable with BDSM, for example, that seeing a scene on tv ( and unless this TV is somewhere in Japan or Germany, I feel confident it was a fairly tame scene) is enough to discombobulate their entire center of being, then no. I can't see structuring concern around a person with that level of tolerance. There has to be a lower limit on what we can say is outside the bounds of public discussion, or else be bound to the lowest common denominator with regards to tolerance.

I imagine you think it won't be popular because it makes you sound like you have absolutely zero empathy. It also underlines your complete lack of understanding of how triggers and PTSD works in regards to sexual assault while making it super clear that you don't really want to understand.

Though, you know, this is a good example of pretty much exactly what I was talking about. For the record, I still think it's shitty and that you're being shitty.

Geareye wrote:

Samsally wrote:

Yeah pretty sure you don't get to tell people how they're 'allowed' to talk about their own trauma.

Is this in response to something I said? I agree with this, I hope that's clear.

It's a response to splitting hairs in regards to how people talk about their trauma. I really don't think it was intended, but the implication seemed to be 'people can say they were traumatized by something, but they can't criticize it beyond that without possibly deserving anon hate'. Which is what I had issue with.

Geareye wrote:

They shouldn't be bulletproof on no account, people should be able to discuss anything. However, I should note, if a person's idea of critically analysing a kink (or anything, really) is "I find x horrible/distatestful" or "I had a traumatic experience with x, therefore x is problematic", then they made a big mistake in their analysis.

Why. Tell me why "I had a traumatic experience with x, therefore x is problematic" deserves to be completely disregarded, because I don't think it should be. If things are traumatizing people, generally speaking -that is bad- and should probably be talked about. Of course there are some things that, ultimately, are one-off issues that don't necessarily shape the whole culture, but when that shit -keeps happening- it absolutely needs to be talked about and the voices of people who have had that experience would be necessary to any conversation about it.

If you silence them, how can you hope to see the trends and figure out what is and isn't a one-off problem?_________________Samsally the GrayAce

It's a response to splitting hairs in regards to how people talk about their trauma. I really don't think it was intended, but the implication seemed to be 'people can say they were traumatized by something, but they can't criticize it beyond that without possibly deserving anon hate'. Which is what I had issue with.

In my original post I said

Geareye wrote:

I wouldn't espouse such (=the anon hate) behaviour

. Of course I don't think people would deserve anon hate.

Samsally wrote:

Why. Tell me why "I had a traumatic experience with x, therefore x is problematic" deserves to be completely disregarded, because I don't think it should be.

Because it's an incorrect statement. BDSM is a risky, dangerous activity and aside from its other risks, it involves the big problem that it requires some other human you can trust to do it with. Which is a big issue. Still, that doesn't make it problematic. It can be really traumatising, when either due to lack of skill or malicius intent from your partner things get fucked up. But you can't say that there's something wrong with BDSM , simply because people might fuck up. Even though, due to the risky nature of BDSM fuck ups will keep on happening. "Problematic" has some times the implication of "morally wrong" which is what my issue is with, here. And why people react badly when someone calls BDSM problematic due to traumatising experiences. The word you're looking for isn't problmatic, it's ''potentially dangerous''.

Which happens with all high risk activities that require trust between humans. That doesn't make them problematic. For the exact same reasons that one might call BDSM , one might call rock climbing with a partner problematic. But it's not. There's nothing wrong with it either, it's just dangerous if you , or your partner willingly or unwillingly fuck up.

Samsally wrote:

If things are traumatizing people, generally speaking -that is bad- and should probably be talked about. Of course there are some things that, ultimately, are one-off issues that don't necessarily shape the whole culture, but when that shit -keeps happening- it absolutely needs to be talked about and the voices of people who have had that experience would be necessary to any conversation about it.

If you silence them, how can you hope to see the trends and figure out what is and isn't a one-off problem?

As I explained above, it can be that shit keeps happening and still ''problematic'' is wrong. Of course people should be able to talk about their experiences, but that doesn't mean they can't make mistakes when they talk about them. And calling something problematic, because it's a risky activity is a mistake. And moreover, because problematic brings moral implication, it's insulting to the other people of the community. Which is why I don't think differntiating between ''problematic'' and ''potentially dangerous'' is splitting hairs. It's important to understand what the actual issue is and the issue here is simply that BDSM is a really risky activity that will keep on fucking up some of the people who will try to engage in it. But just because it's dangerous, it doesn't make it wrong.

P.S. : I fear that our disagreement will turn into whether "problematic" implies "moral wrongness" or not. I don't want to do that. I'm sorry if I dragged you into this simply due to a word misusage.

Are kids from Detroit allowed to feel their own pain, or do they have to exotify Africa as a dangerous place where they are clearly lucky enough not to live while simultaneously burying their trauma?

Also, people who have been raped and have PTSD (You know. that thing soldiers get) - are they allowed to acknowledge their own trauma if they happen to live in the USA? Or is that only allowed in the deep dark heart of Africa? (You know, where they filmed Lion King?)

If someone's past experience or brain chemistry means they can't function for several hours or days after being triggered, how quickly do you think they should kill themselves - since they are obviously not strong enough for this world and can't expect even a tiny amount of decency. I mean, it is convenient that you are the standard from which all others should judge themselves, but you can't expect me to figure this one out on my own.

Now I would suggest you go get a trauma in order to know what that actually is like, but it's not something you can choose to acquire for an experiment._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

Aright so I think our fundamental 'miss' when it comes to this conversation is that we are, at this point, talking about how people talk. Which is kind of silly, I guess, but I'm probably going to defend a traumatized person's ability to talk about their trauma however they damn well please until I turn blue and die. So there is that.

Unfortunately, your mountain climbing analogy doesn't work very well because it completely erases the existence of rape culture and the many nuanced and varied forms it can take.

To be honest, I'm so not qualified to talk all that much about how BDSM relates to rape culture. I just know that it is a thing that exists in our society and rape culture is terrible and permeates literally everything in our society so BDSM does not get to be exempt from that. It's a thing that needs to be talked about and silencing victims and survivors (either with anon hate or the more insidious tone-policing) is not going to help anything and is also a pretty shitty thing to do._________________Samsally the GrayAce

@Samsally: yeah, we've reached a point where there's not much left to talk about. For the record, I repeat, I think victims should be allowed to talk without receiving any hate or tone policing. But when they move on from talking about their experiences to making judgment calls about BDSM in general, I'll hold them to the same standard of correctness as I'd hold anyone else, regardless if they're victims or not.

For rape culture and BDSM, things get really tricky. Obviously neither of us are qualified experts on the matter. My personal view is, that you can't attribute the issues BDSM has to rape culture, because quite frankly only a portion of them is related to it. The problems of BDSM can happen either due to a mistake of one partner (unrelated to rape culture) , equipment fault (unrelated to rape culture) or willing abuse of power (I guess only related to rape culture in some of the cases where it's male to female abuse, although I'm clearly not an expert).

Obviously, rape culture plays a part, so the rock climbing analogy wasn't perfect, because it left this factor out, but it was a good enough analogy for the rest of them. And the rape culture issues that come into BDSM come to the same degree in ''regular'' sex, so it's not a BDSM&rape_culture problem, it's a general SEX&rape_culture problem.

.....

I guess to make the analogy perfect, I'd say it's like sex while rockclimbing on the side of cliff. Includes all issues. And I guess it has a good view too. Because cliff. And for those who like it, because sex too.

Problematic doesn't refer to an absolute moral wrong. It refers to a thing that can only be considered meaningful if you don't know anything about what it refers to. So jokes about a man looking silly in makeup is only meaningful if you know nothing about genderqueer/trans/etc people or if you don't know anything about them. Blindness as a metaphor is only meaningful if you don't know anything about actual blind people or are not blind yourself. And this isn't even cut and dried when you are involved with or knowledgeable about the subject of a problematic thing, because different experiences and life stages give people different conclusions.

The problematic parts of BDSM have to do with roleplaying sexual slavery and harassment. I think that S&M is the biggest part of that.

I know people who are in S&M relationships. They were abused, and being in an S&M relationship with a trusted, awesome person helps them heal. it gives them a sense of safety they can't get any other way. When I learned that, it changed my whole view of the thing._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

I imagine you think it won't be popular because it makes you sound like you have absolutely zero empathy. It also underlines your complete lack of understanding of how triggers and PTSD works in regards to sexual assault while making it super clear that you don't really want to understand.

Though, you know, this is a good example of pretty much exactly what I was talking about. For the record, I still think it's shitty and that you're being shitty.

Samsally, someday you will be a hero and a defender of the downtrodden, but first you'll have to stop saying things like this.

As far as I understand, Oklahomansun said people are free and reasonable to carry their own conversations (with willing participants). You're reacting as if they'd proposed posting yelling about BDSM on a My Little Pony site.

Oklahomansun is not "shitty", nor more ignorant than you about PTSD, nor less empathetic than you. Those insults really aren't necessary.

Quote:

Why. Tell me why "I had a traumatic experience with x, therefore x is problematic" deserves to be completely disregarded, because I don't think it should be. . . .
If you silence them, how can you hope to see the trends and figure out what is and isn't a one-off problem?

Because in that case, they are the ones doing the silencing. "X is upsetting to me" is a personal statement, but "X is problematic" doesn't just end there, it's followed up with "so X should be taken off the air." And it's too often referring to gay love. The "X is problematic" people are the ones telling others what to discuss with their own friends, what to say in their own blogs, etc. Here's a comparison:
1. "I had a traumatic experience with BDSM. Don't talk about BDSM with me." <-- This is good.
2. "I had a traumatic experience with BDSM. Never talk about BDSM, not even quietly with your own friends." <-- This is bad.
3. "I had a traumatic experience with BDSM. TVs should never show any BDSM." <-- This is bad._________________

I imagine you think it won't be popular because it makes you sound like you have absolutely zero empathy. It also underlines your complete lack of understanding of how triggers and PTSD works in regards to sexual assault while making it super clear that you don't really want to understand.

Though, you know, this is a good example of pretty much exactly what I was talking about. For the record, I still think it's shitty and that you're being shitty.

Samsally, someday you will be a hero and a defender of the downtrodden, but first you'll have to stop saying things like this.

As far as I understand, Oklahomansun said people are free and reasonable to carry their own conversations (with willing participants). You're reacting as if they'd proposed posting yelling about BDSM on a My Little Pony site.

Oklahomansun is not "shitty", nor more ignorant than you about PTSD, nor less empathetic than you. Those insults really aren't necessary.

By telling her those insults are not necessary you're helping to prove her point: you're telling a person how they are supposed to feel and react.

And her response to what they said was TOTALLY valid:

OklahomanSun wrote:

This won't be a popular thing, but if someone is talking about being whipped, for example, in a cafe and another person becomes emotionally traumatised by it, they should probably find a nice cabin in the woods somewhere and retire from civilisation.

This isn't a pretty world, and I can't give a lot of weight to people who become emotionally traumatised simply by occasionally realising the reality of it. I will give some caveats for things like survivors of abuse, but if we're talking about a person who is simply so uncomfortable with BDSM, for example, that seeing a scene on tv ( and unless this TV is somewhere in Japan or Germany, I feel confident it was a fairly tame scene) is enough to discombobulate their entire center of being, then no. I can't see structuring concern around a person with that level of tolerance. There has to be a lower limit on what we can say is outside the bounds of public discussion, or else be bound to the lowest common denominator with regards to tolerance.

It's a super dismissive and callous view point that makes almost no effort to strive for a middle ground. Specifically:

Quote:

This isn't a pretty world, and I can't give a lot of weight to people who become emotionally traumatised simply by occasionally realising the reality of it. I will give some caveats for things like survivors of abuse, but if we're talking about a person who is simply so uncomfortable with BDSM

It's glossing over and deflecting the actual point. A speaker in a public space has more control than the listener and thus bears the greater responsibility for their actions; a person has more control over what they say than those who are exposed to what is being said. You are effectively defending someone who goes out into public with the chicken pox._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Nah, I'll probably continue to tell people if they've said something shitty or done something shitty. You'll note I didn't say "you are a shitty person" and instead made it explicitly clear that the behavior they are exhibiting is what I was calling shitty, not their entire being. I said that what they posted made them sound like they lacked empathy, I didn't tell them they had none. I actually went out of my way to avoid doing exactly what you're so quick to accuse me of.

I haven't broken it down because, frankly, their response read as so dismissive I doubt it would do any good anyway. Basically though; making light of people triggered by dubious consent in media* and dismissing their concerns without even fully understanding them is, for lack of a better word, a shitty thing to do.

*we have totes a LOT of dubious consent in our media right now, a lot of it being paraded as healthy and normal which it isn't. a lot of times it's even rated lower and easier to access than fully consensual sex scenes which is eight kinds of fucked up but that is a tangent for another day because I'm starting to burn out right now. it is a problem that i don't appreciate being dismissed so carelessly, though.

wobster109 wrote:

Because in that case, they are the ones doing the silencing. "X is upsetting to me" is a personal statement, but "X is problematic" doesn't just end there, it's followed up with "so X should be taken off the air."

Ah, so you are arguing with something nobody actually said in this conversation. Calling something problematic is not the same thing as demanding it be scrubbed from existence. Calling something problematic is the start of a conversation about how to make it less problematic._________________Samsally the GrayAce

A speaker in a public space has more control than the listener and thus bears the greater responsibility for their actions; a person has more control over what they say than those who are exposed to what is being said. You are effectively defending someone who goes out into public with the chicken pox.

I genuinely want your opinion on the following. Shouldn't it be acceptable for people to be as selfish as they want with how they handle their own bodies? Yes, the speaker has the power to filter his/her talking in attempt to not hurt any potential listeners, but shouldn't the speaker, since his/her body is the agent of the action here be able to prioritise whether he/she values ''not hurting others'' or ''not filtering my talk'' more ,and use his/her own body accordingly? Are people obligated to care about other people's desires more than their own (or even care at all) when it comes to how they'll handle their own body?

Aright so I think our fundamental 'miss' when it comes to this conversation is that we are, at this point, talking about how people talk. Which is kind of silly, I guess, but I'm probably going to defend a traumatized person's ability to talk about their trauma however they damn well please until I turn blue and die. So there is that.

Unfortunately, your mountain climbing analogy doesn't work very well because it completely erases the existence of rape culture and the many nuanced and varied forms it can take.

To be honest, I'm so not qualified to talk all that much about how BDSM relates to rape culture. I just know that it is a thing that exists in our society and rape culture is terrible and permeates literally everything in our society so BDSM does not get to be exempt from that. It's a thing that needs to be talked about and silencing victims and survivors (either with anon hate or the more insidious tone-policing) is not going to help anything and is also a pretty shitty thing to do.

I don't think it is silly to talk about the way people talk. It really does have an impact on the outcome of a situation. If you say "I was traumatized by x, therefore x is problematic" you will probably get some backlash (not saying it is justified, just that it is probable). On the other hand, if you say "I was traumatized by x, therefore x is dangerous" you'll probably actually get support from the x community, along with advice on how to be more safe about x should you choose to try again in the future to try to avoid trauma. I'm not saying in the second case that you won't get any backlash, because I'm realistic and know that no matter the community there are people that suck. Yes, there might be some victim blaming, because again, there are people that suck. My point is that a change in the way you talk can lead to a much more positive attitude.

That said, people can talk about their trauma however they like. This is just pointing out that the way you talk about it does have an impact on the response you get._________________My deviantArt - Blog-ity blog

A speaker in a public space has more control than the listener and thus bears the greater responsibility for their actions; a person has more control over what they say than those who are exposed to what is being said. You are effectively defending someone who goes out into public with the chicken pox.

I genuinely want your opinion on the following. Shouldn't it be acceptable for people to be as selfish as they want with how they handle their own bodies? Yes, the speaker has the power to filter his/her talking in attempt to not hurt any potential listeners, but shouldn't the speaker, since his/her body is the agent of the action here be able to prioritise whether he/she values ''not hurting others'' or ''not filtering my talk'' more ,and use his/her own body accordingly? Are people obligated to care about other people's desires more than their own (or even care at all) when it comes to how they'll handle their own body?

If you utilize empathy, all of your questions are moot._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Last edited by Darqcyde on Thu Mar 27, 2014 5:33 pm; edited 2 times in total

I'm not asking how you'd personally act, I ask if you think it is morally acceptable for people to act selfishly and even without empathy and interest for others when it comes to how they'll handle their own bodies.